"Homelessness In The U.S. Is Up 48 Percent Since 2015,
And Americans Are Being Laid Off In Droves…"
by Michael Snyder
"How can anyone out there possibly believe that the U.S. economy is doing well? As you will see below, the number of homeless Americans has risen to the highest level ever recorded, and large companies all over the country are laying off workers in droves. As I have discussed previously, the number of Americans that were laid off in 2023 jumped 98 percent compared to the year before, and now during the first month of 2024 it feels like we are being hit by a tsunami of layoffs. It literally seems like someone has turned a fire hose on, but the Biden administration continues to insist that unemployment is “low” and that the outlook for the U.S. economy is positive.
Honestly, I don’t understand how the Biden administration can say that the outlook for the U.S. economy is positive when the number of Americans that are homeless has been increasing at the fastest pace ever recorded. According to a brand new report that was just released by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, the number of homeless Americas has increased 48 percent since 2015…"According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country’s unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said."
Homelessness, long a problem in states such as California and Washington, has also increased in historically more affordable parts of the U.S.. Arizona, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas have seen the largest growths in their unsheltered populations due to rising local housing costs. We can see evidence of this all around us. Tent cities are popping up like mushrooms in our major cities and countless Americans are living in their vehicles and RVs.
One of the primary reasons why homelessness has been surging so dramatically is because rental costs have soared to unprecedented heights…"Rent in the U.S. has steadily climbed since 2001. In analyzing Census and real estate data, the Harvard researchers found that half of all U.S. households across income levels spent between 30% and 50% of their monthly pay on housing in 2022, defining them as “cost-burdened.” Some 12 million tenants were severely cost-burdened that year, meaning they spent more than half their monthly pay on rent and utilities, up 14% from pre-pandemic levels.
People earning between $45,000 and $74,999 per year took the biggest hit from rising rents - on average, 41% of their paycheck went toward rent and utilities, the Joint Center for Housing Studies said. Tenants should generally allocate no more than 30% of their income toward rent, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development."
But Joe Biden insists that inflation is “low”. You believe him, don’t you? Sadly, more Americans will soon be hitting the streets because we are witnessing an insane wave of layoffs all over the nation. Right now, it is being reported that Salesforce has decided to conduct another round of layoffs…"Salesforce is cutting about 700 employees, The Wall Street Journal reported. The job cuts, which amount to about 1% of its global workforce, follow a series of workforce reductions last year. In 2023, Marc Benioff’s company laid off about 10% of its total workforce as it grappled with a swarm of activist investors who wanted margins increased faster than planned."
And we have just learned that REI will be giving the axe to 357 workers…"REI is laying off 357 workers, mostly in the outdoor retailer’s headquarters and distribution centers. In a letter to employees, CEO Eric Artz noted that “outdoor specialty retail has experienced four quarters of decline – and that trend has been worsening.” While REI was able to outperform this for much of last year, he said, this trend caught up to the company in the fourth quarter, and difficult conditions are expected in 2024."
"Difficult conditions are expected in 2024?" Oh really…Who could have seen that one coming?
After their deal with Amazon fell through, iRobot announced that 31 percent of its staff would be hitting the bricks…"Amazon and iRobot, the maker of the popular Roomba vacuum, mutually called off their estimated $1.7 billion acquisition deal Monday, citing numerous regulatory hurdles. Immediately after the deal was publicly squashed, iRobot announced it would lay off 31% of its staff and that founder Colin Angle would step down from his role as CEO, citing a focus on profitability, stability and growth. Glen Weinstein will serve as interim CEO. Shares of iRobot (IRBT) were down around 9% in noon trading following the news. Amazon (AMZN), which was up about 0.5% in noon trading, will pay iRobot a previously agreed-upon $94 million cancellation fee.
Google, Microsoft, Levi’s, TikTok, Riot Games, eBay, Wayfair and Macy’s are some of the other big names that have also announced layoffs so far in 2024. But no industry is being hit harder than the mainstream media…"Journalists across the country burst into flames of panic this week, as bad news for the news business crested and erupted everywhere all at once.
Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire publisher of the Los Angeles Times, laid off 20 percent of his newsroom. Over at Time magazine, its billionaire owners, Marc and Lynne Benioff, did the same for 15 percent of their unionized editorial employees. This latest conflagration had ignited at Sports Illustrated the previous week as catastrophic layoffs were dispensed via email to most staffers. Business Insider (whose parent company Axel Springer also owns POLITICO) jettisoned 8 percent of its staff while workers at Condé Nast, Forbes, the New York Daily News and elsewhere walked out to protest forthcoming cuts at their shops."
Perhaps if they had not made a habit of blatantly lying to us over and over again during the past several years they would not have lost all of their remaining credibility and they would not have had to lay off so many workers.
But even though so much is going wrong with the economy right now, many of the “experts” continue to tell us that happier times are just around the corner. For example, Ed Yardeni insists that we will soon relive the Roaring Twenties…"Ed Yardeni, a veteran market strategist, thinks the US economy might be about to relive the “Roaring ’20s.” The Yardeni Research president said during Friday’s episode of Bloomberg’s “Merryn Talks Money” podcast that he’s expecting a combination of loose post-pandemic monetary policy and rapid technological change to drive growth higher over the next decade.
Wouldn’t it be great if he was actually right? Of course the truth is that he is just being delusional. Things are bad now, and things are going to get really bad during the second half of 2024 and beyond. If you still have a good job and a warm home to come back to at night, you should be very thankful. Because more Americans are losing their jobs and losing their homes with each passing day, and the level of economic suffering that we are witnessing is already off the charts."
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